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Kids Crafts: Outdoor Materials Collage

Children love to forage and collect "treasures." Send them outside with a basket, in search of all kinds of nature's trinkets:

pine cones

twigs

seed pods

leaves

stems

flowers

rocks

feathers

shells

moss

The list goes on...

Once the children have collected a pretty good haul of Mother Nature's gems, you can use them to make a nature collage:

The collage can be a free-flowing, abstract piece, or might make more realistic images, such as this old man, made with milkweed pods, twigs, and corn husks:

Outdoor Materials Collage

1. Collect small items from outside, such as pine cones, small sticks, pebbles, or seed pods.

2. Use a sturdy material as your canvas, such as cardboard or tag board. It can be small, like a post card, or large, like a poster.

3. Older children may be able to use a hot glue gun (or an adult could do the gluing), otherwise, just use regular white school glue. Be sure that your outdoor pieces are not too heavy, otherwise they will fall off.

4. Very young children will likely glue the shapes on in a random, abstract fashion. Older children will be able to create people, animals, and scenes with their materials.

5. Allow the glue to thoroughly dry before displaying. They can be framed and hung as wall art or even used as greeting cards.

To avoid clogging and bad odors, sink and tub drains should be periodically cleaned.

A once a month cleaning with a non-toxic, homemade cleaner prevents needing a stronger, usually sodium hydroxide (lye) based, cleaner to remove clogs. Sodium hydroxide is extremely caustic, and will damage the lungs if inhaled, burn skin and eyes, and can be fatal if swallowed. In addition, the heat generated by using sodium hydroxide can soften PVC pipes, and damage old, corroded pipes. It also changes the pH of water and can cause fish kills.

A much nicer alternative to this harsh chemical is the simple combination of baking soda and vinegar, followed with boiling water. When baking soda and vinegar are combined, they foam and expand, cleaning the sides of your pipes and dissolving fatty acids. The boiling water then washes it all away. This method is a great way to use up the box of baking soda in your frig that is not longer doing a good job of deodorizing.

Every little thing you do helps and the small things really do add up. Which is why I have a somewhat creepy tub of soap scraps in my bathroom.

I admit, it seems a little weird to save soap scraps, but it wasn't always this way. In fact, they used to have little contraptions for saving your soap scraps.

But those days are gone. Or are they?

I think frugality is making a comeback--at least, it is around here, because I save all our soap scraps. What do I do with them?

Recycled Soap Scrap Bars

If you are regular users of bar soap, a family of four can easily manage to get six additional bars of soap per year by saving soap scraps. It doesn't seem like much, so I'll write it this way instead: in ten years, that would be 60 bars of "free" soap. There, that seems more impressive.

Ingredients:
Soap scraps
Water
Herbs (optional)

1. Grate or finely chop soap scraps. Measure the amount you end up wi…